Junku Nishimura was born in 1967 in a small coal-mining village in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan. During high school he was strongly influenced by the work of Japanese combat photographers that had documented the war in Vietnam.

After leaving college in 1990, he worked as a dishwasher and club DJ, before going on to travel around Japan working in the construction industry. Armed with his Leica, he photographed the places he worked.

In 2009, he quit his job and travelled the world taking pictures and working as a freelance photographer. Four years later, he returned to the village in which he grew up. Nowadays, he photographs the folks from his hometown whilst tending to his rice farm and working the forest as a lumberjack.